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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	1997
Country of origin:	UK / USA
Director:	Roger Spottiswoode
Genre:	Bondesque media yarn
Starring:	Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce, Teri Hatcher, Götz Otto, Judi Dench
Rating:	5/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120347/
Tagline:	The Man. The Number. The License...are all back.
Favourite line:	"Soon I'll have reached out to and influenced more people than anybody in the history of this planet, save God himself. And the best he ever managed was the Sermon on the Mount."

My favourite Bond of them all and, whilst that may not be the consensus, I feel there is enough in this movie to warrant the tag 'Best Bond movie ever.'
Controversial?
Well, maybe, but just give me a minute would you? Yes, you, just wait, hang on, HANG ON. Jesus fucking Christ, have some patience.
Pierce is back in his second outing after the well received Goldeneye and, with the renewal of his licence to kill comes a swagger, a confidence in his role that shines throughout.
He's comfortable in his new skin, revelling in his critically acclaimed take on the iconic character and this confidence carries the movie very effectively indeed.

The plot?
Jonathan Pryce is Elliot Carver, a media mogul cut from the same cloth as Rupert Murdoch, presiding over a media empire that has the power to topple governments, encroaching on every important world economy save one: China.
But Carver has a plan to change that.
By fooling both the British and the Chinese into thinking that they are firing on each other, Carver makes use of a Stealth ship in the South China Sea to bring the world to the brink of a new World War with the intention that, once the buildings stop burning, the phoenix that rises from the flames will be his own corporation, giving tomorrow's news today, the only enterprise capable of doing so because they themselves are in fact creating the stories.

It's wonderfully over the top and Pryce hams it up like a true pro, maniacal in his scheming and, for the first time since, perhaps, Drax in Moonraker we have a genuine megalomaniac on our hands.
Michelle Yeoh, she of Jackie Chan movie and Crouching Tiger fame makes for a great action foil to Brosnan's Bond and, truthfully, the only disappointment of the movie is Hatcher, who is fairly anonymous as Carver's wife, Paris.
A new Bond for a new generation continues to convince.
A good, good film.